Resisting the Disgust Bias
Boris’s government stands poised to make it’s first major mistake.
The legislation for the wanking tax (sorry, the Porn Block) has been knocking around for ages. But for various reasons keeps getting delayed (somewhat ironically the EU blocked it in July). There have been numerous attempts to control porn on the internet, Porn Block being just the latest.
But this needs to be placed into a proper context. Because porn isn’t the issue here. It is the distraction, the wedge issue to get ‘right-minded’ people to agree that something must be done for the sake of the children. Remember that Porn Block form’s part of the Digital Economy Act 2017, which is a shortened form of the Digital Economy Act 2010, which was part of a wider range of initiatives from the EU, the UN, the US: that were in general terms intended to monetize the network via censorship.
This article from 2013 offers an insight into the Internet Passport as envisioned by Eugene Kaspersky, of Kaspersky Labs…
“Under his vision, Internet access would be divided into two main zones. The first would be free access for activities such as reading the news or e-mail. The second would be restricted where a unique ID will be required to access “critical resources” such as bank transactions.
“It’s like walking on the street, you don’t need a badge. But to get to this hotel room you need one,” Kaspersky elaborated.”
Which all sounds quite harmless, who could possibly object to safety?
Well if you can be identified, then you can be tracked, and you can be fined if you are found to be doing something wrong. And who decides if you have done something wrong? The Twitter Trust and Safety Council is a useful place to start when compiling a lit of names, but there are numerous bodies willing to lend a hand for the ‘public good’, to ‘keep the public safe’, and to cash in on a share of the fines.
If you follow these battles for control over a period of time, aside from getting hopelessly lost in the tangle of names (rather like in Ukraine), it is amusing to watch the way the war of the ‘word’ (and who gets to define hate speech) changes dependent upon the rise and fall of which NGO.
Comparable battles for big money are being fought over adjunct components of ‘the system’ like Fact Checkers.
And since the purpose of all of this is money, consider Kaspersky’s web for a moment, and ponder why the media (that is losing money hand over fist) keeps warning about the ‘dark web’? Then ask yourself if you have an internet passport, (that is monitoring you, and fining you, and being used to access content, and keeping you safe) how long will it be before everything is divided between the ‘dark web’ and the ‘corporate web’.
When Boris Johnson made his inaugural speech at the UN, he addressed these issues, and rather surprisingly — as a number of British companies are at the forefront of building this infrastructure (and thus paying tax) — Mr Johnson delivered a rather libertarian message, warning about the censorship.
Which brings me to Sarah Vine, the wife of Michael Gove (sometime friend of Boris Johnson). Writing in today’s Daily Mail, Ms Vine sought to link the incident in Aya Napa to pornography.
“ And what breaks my heart is that it’s what so many young girls and women have to put up with. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Ayia Napa or Aylesbury: the world is full of boys and men whose sexual and moral compasses have been completely skewed by watching porn from a young age.”
What evidence she has for this, beyond her own bias, is not clear. For whatever else has been said about the case no-one, so far as I have seen, has suggested that pornography (in any form) played a part — either with the girl involved or the twelve boys.
This is not the first time the Daily Mail, or indeed other media outlets, has sought to promote Porn Block by deliberately ignoring female sexuality in order to promote dangerous stereotypes about male sexuality and it’s links to pornography.
When the back packer Grace Millane was murdered the Mail ran a story with the headline, “The terrifying sex trend being FORCED on young women: How the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane exposed a dangerous change in sexual behaviour fuelled by online porn” in which…
“Porn expert Professor Dines points out: ‘Porn not only teaches men about dominance, it teaches women about submission.’
It has not helped, she adds, that strangulation has been euphemistically re-branded as ‘breath play’ and touted as a new type of risqué sex by women’s magazines. The novel Fifty Shades Of Grey also romanticised S&M culture.
‘If you are a young girl growing up in a heavily pornified world, you are going to feel it’s normal for you to want those things.’”
And fair play, they point out Fifty Shades of Grey — and leave aside for a moment the nonsense about dominance and submission — what they don’t mention is e-book market, the glossy market, nor do they appear to have read My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday.
Which brings us back to the point that if the Conservatives decide to adopt the Porn Block they are making a serious tactical mistake. It will inevitably lead to mistakes, it is yet another example of the law requiring you to prove you are not guilty (rather than assuming you are innocent), and it protects no one.
The only thing Porn Block does is to pave the way for the Internet Passport, and the ‘corporate internet’.
Oh, and it allows NGO’s to make more money by being busy-bodies.
